


Sophie Lost—The Piece of Her Heart Job

by crayonbreakygal



Series: The Team Lost [3]
Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 00:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6589189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crayonbreakygal/pseuds/crayonbreakygal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophie lost.  Big time.  Takes place pre-series thru The Maltese Falcon Job, season two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sophie Lost—The Piece of Her Heart Job

Part of a series

Sophie Lost—The Piece of Her Heart Job

Sophie lost.  Big time.  Not only did she lose her sense of identity, something that she’d worked on for decades, she’d lost herself in too many characters.  Sure, they came in handy sometimes.  Some of them even saved her life more than once.  But who was she?  What did she want out of life? If she had continued on the way she had, before that bomb blew up her apartment, she would have been lost for good. 

She lost the grift.  She lost what was essential to her identity.  She’d done this since she was young.  It was challenging to say the least.  But it made her happy to know that she was the only person she could rely upon.  She’d learned early in life that relying on others could get you nowhere or more than likely, hurt.

She lost her father. Not that he was there in the first place.  He was a drunken bum who could not be depended on for anything ever.  She’d try and make sure he made it home, try and make sure he kept his job.  But this wasn’t a job for a twelve year old.  By the time she was fourteen, he had disappeared, never to reappear.  Her mother was devastated.  Sophie didn’t mourn the man, she mourned the role that he was supposed to do. 

She lost her mother.  It was her mother that held everything together, at least for a while.  Her mother though had nothing left to give at the end of the day, after working two jobs, taking care of Sophie’s siblings.  Sophie tried to help, but it was never good enough.  She tired of always playing the peacemaker between her mother and father.  While her mother worked, she went to school, took care of her two younger siblings, and then went to work herself when she was old enough. She didn’t want to end up like her mother, a joyless creature who hated men, hated everything about life that was worth living.

She lost her siblings.  Her mother became extremely ill when Sophie was a teenager.  The pressure to take care of everything became too much.  Her siblings were sent off to distant relatives.  Sophie cried, tried to convince the others that they did not have to leave. They were all she had.  In the end, she had been outvoted.  Once when she attempted to contact them after her mother passed away, both had turned away from her, like she was a stranger to them.  The distant relative that had taken them in had told her to never come back. Sophie never did.  That hurt her more than she thought because she had intended to never let any harm come to them. 

Sophie lost William.  He was the first man to actually not treat her like an object.  Sure, she was conning him and his family.  It was the longest con she had ever devised, but she got in too deep.  Falling in love with the person you were supposed to con out of a lot of money was not a great idea.  William was just that man.  He showed her that she could fall in love with someone other than herself.  He was kind, generous, gentle, everything that she was not.  Why couldn’t this work out, she thought?  Why did she not deserve happiness with the man of her dreams?  Only he wasn’t.  He was weak in the end.  It was the day of their wedding when she finally realized that she was trapped.  She’d become exactly what she had wished not to:  the society woman who was just there for show.  She ran and ran fast, off to Rome, then Damascus, then South America, just to cover her tracks.  No one came to find her.  Later, she learned that William drank himself to death.  Had she been the cause?  Did he actually love her in his own way?  Or had she gotten away just in time, because he possibly could have taken her down with him?  She’d never know.

She lost Nathan Ford, the first time.  She never had him in the first place.  He belonged to someone else.  With the failed wedding behind her, she started her old grifting life over again.  She’d seen him before, but avoided contact with Nate at all costs.  He was smart and cunning and was not to be tangled with ever.  When she finally did encounter him, right after getting back on the horse, she was intrigued.  She was drawn to him like a moth to a flame.  Finally introducing herself with her Devereaux persona, she understood that it might be a mistake.  He always made it interesting though, except when he shot her.  Then she’d wished she’d never met him.  That had hurt her pride more than the hole in her back.  The bloody wanker wasn’t going to get away with it if she had her way.  Slowly though, he worked his way back into her good graces, especially the time he bailed her out of a bad situation in Kazakhstan. That she would never forget.

The issue with him though was the attraction.  She’d never felt so alive than when she was in the same room as he was.  Men were usually tools to her, to get her what she wanted.  Even her one real relationship was based on a lie.  William had done a number on her confidence.  Sophie could have any man and usually got her way.  Nate wouldn’t fall for her charms.  That ring on his finger prevented him from succumbing.  The looks of longing though told her that if he didn’t have that ring, then he would have been hers for the taking.

It all came crashing down though when Nate’s son died.  He’d come to her for comfort.  All she could give to him was advice.  Go back to your wife, she’d told him.  He’d shot back to her that he didn’t have one anymore.  That barrier had been taken down in the cruelest way possible.  If his son had lived, she surmised, he’d still be married. Or so she thought.

She lost Nate again.  That had entirely been her fault.  She should have never helped him that first time, to bring down a man who thought he was invincible.  Dubenich had taken Nate and the rest of the crew for a ride, with them almost being blown up in the process.  When he had come to her for help, she’d jumped at the chance to work with him again, to regain some of that glory she’d craved over the last few years.  With Nate’s revelation of being free, she’d taken a leave of absence from grifting.  Here was her chance to shine again in the spotlight, with him by her side. 

He was broken.  His son’s death had broken him in ways she never could have thought.  She stayed, she struggled, she yelled, she sulked.  He was never going to change.  Could he be damaged beyond repair? Did she want to spend her time with a man that was no longer there?  Was her image of Nate from two years before just a mirage?

Rehab didn’t work for him and only angered her more.  The chance to acquire the two Davids though pulled her back in to a life of grifting.  Nate had picked up on what she wanted from the start.  If Sterling hadn’t intervened she would have pulled off the biggest score ever.  It was not meant to be.  Nate was angry, the whole team was angry that she could only think about one thing: the con.

Moving on after this was the only way for her to escape what had happened.  The rest of the team forgave her in time, and she drifted back into the fold.  She tried to live a normal life, like she had tried the year before.  No one saw her for what she was, even when she tried to date a normal person. 

She lost the team.  Sure, it was all of her own doing.  She had to flee.  After having survived that bombing, she wondered who she had become.  Conning wasn’t exciting anymore.  It had become more dangerous, less fun, and more heartbreaking, due to Nate for the most part, but due to the fact that she couldn’t change him.  He didn’t need her, never wanted her.  The team needed her though.  She knew that.  But to get away from Nate, she had to give them up too.  They all had rebelled against that idea, calling her constantly with updates, advice, grumblings about Nate.  It made her so sad that she couldn’t be there to help. She’d let them down.

She lost Nate, again, times three.  After not drinking, drinking again, pulling himself under even worse than he had before, he finally realized that he needed her.  He really needed her for her.  It was a revelation that had taken him years to come to.  Hitting rock bottom had made him realize that he needed her to be his compass, his guiding light in the world.  Once she found out though what had made him come to that conclusion, it made her angry. Sure, she believed that he had turned that corner.  It took a con that had gone sour to make him see the truth. 

So she lost and won that day.  As he handcuffed himself to that boat, she knew she’d lost him.  She’d finally won though.  She meant more to him than she’d ever thought he was capable.  She’d found herself, brought herself back because he needed her.  She hadn’t changed him one bit.  He had made that decision all on his own.

“You call me. You tell me you need me, so you can do this?”

It was the ultimate sacrifice. It told her that he thought she was worth it.  Once she had told him that she thought he considered her a second class citizen.  Would he have done this if he thought she was beneath him?  No one had ever sacrificed themselves for her, not her father, her mother, William, anyone until she had joined this team.  They’d each lay down their lives for each other, especially the man handcuffed to the side of the boat, grinning at her, telling her with his eyes that yes, he needed her to keep him safe, from himself and from the big world at large.

As she kissed him, for only the third time in a decade, she realized that this was it.  He was hers, finally, except for the fact that he was probably going to prison for a long while, he was acting rather strange and the boat was going to be crawling with FBI agents at any moment.  She was sure the slap would have him thinking about the kiss for months afterward.  Always leave them guessing, she figured.  As she climbed onto the helicopter with the others, she realized that she finally won the one thing that meant the most to her:  she really was Sophie Devereaux, grifter extraordinaire, friend and family to the other three sitting directly across from her, finally able to see that the man who she had loved for ages had come to his senses.

The thrill of finally winning was intoxicating. 


End file.
